There are known pyrotechnic cutting devices in which, by the generation of a gas pressure pulse by combustion of pyrotechnic material, a cutting tool is driven in order to cut various materials such as for example ropes, wires, current buses, or plastic bars for the most varied purposes.
For example, DE 38 18 669 C1 describes such a cutting device as a “rope cutting device.” Here, by the generation of the pyrotechnic pressure pulse, an initially restrained cutting chisel is accelerated over a short free-flight path in order to sever the rope or a wire after the absorption of kinetic energy.
Other documents, “Pyrotechnic Cutting Device,” DE 44 38 157 C1, or “Power Cutter,” DE 197 32 650 A1, describe “free-flying cutting tools” without restraint, in which the initial friction and the mass represent the only hindrance to the driving pressure pulse. These mechanisms, however, are also suitable for cutting materials of the most varied shapes and purposes. In the known approaches, however, it is disadvantageous if insulating materials with low mechanical strength are used for the cutting tools on technical and cost grounds, such as for example plastic parts fabricated by injection molding. Specifically, if the cutting tool itself has a high velocity with which the actual effective edge or surface of the cutting chisel impacts on the medium to be cut, then high and uncontrolled transverse accelerations and rebounds occur because of the mechanical interaction between the effective edge and the material to be severed, which has the principal effect of making it extraordinarily difficult and in some cases impossible to employ low-cost plastics as material for the cutting tool. The tolerances of the tool guiding elements must likewise be very close, which cannot be achieved at low cost.
It is a goal of the invention further to develop a pyrotechnic cutting device according to the preamble of claim 1 in such fashion that the problems resulting from free flight of the cutting tool are avoided, the economical use of plastics in the cutting device is possible, and a pressure pulse generator adaptable to a variety of materials to be cut and also to a variety of geometries can be implemented in one and the same device for a given structural volume.